NOW!

Comments

• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  Researchers tracked the prices of six to 10 big ticket items at seven national chains – Best Buy, Costco, Home Depot, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Sears and Target for 44 weeks starting in June 2014.

  Some of the stores did run valid sales – limited-time price reductions on the selected merchandise. But Brasler said Sears, Kohl’s and Macy’s offered what he called “fake” sale prices.

  “It’s shameful what they’re doing,” Brasler told NBC News. “They’re making it appear that this is a special low price, when in fact, it’s always their price. And often, it’s not even a low price, if you took the time to compare.”

  • Sears had what Checkbook called “the most egregious always-on-sale practices.” Eight out of nine items tracked, were almost or always on sale. Two were on sale 44 out of 44 weeks.
  • Kohl’s had eight of the nine items checked on sale more than half the time during the 44-week survey period. Four were always or almost always offered at sale prices.
  • Macy’s had one item almost always on sale and four that were on sale 70 percent or more of the time. Two items Checkbook monitored never went on sale.

  source

  • InputZero@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨minute⁩ ago

    That’s like hard drive prices. Looking at Newegg their hard drives are always “on sale” it just depends on whether the sale is $10.00 or $50.00.

    source
• BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  I look forward to not shopping on black Friday, same as I do every year.

  source
• mossberg590@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  Use a price tracker. There are many for Amazon, eg camelcamelcamel.com

  You can always get your own screen scraper software to do it yourself.

  source
• Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Years back when I worked for Kmart, there was some sort of large Samsung Galaxy tablet advertised as a Black Friday front-page exclusive for only $40. As you can imagine, people were ready to kick the fucking doors down to get their hands on those, because anyone dumb enough to participate in the Black Friday madness is definitely too dumb to know why 1gb non-expandable storage is next to fucking worthless. Not to mention they had the weakest hardware imaginable, with a whopping 1.5 MP camera.

  Black Friday is such a cheap illusion.

  source

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Oi, this lil guy still flies, after some taming.

    Image

    Image

    source
• b0ber@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’d never buy from place that uses these shitty tactics. You can always compare the price via other websites.

  source

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    You can always compare the price via other websites.

    Black Friday Brief: ‘Derivative’ TVs a Smoking Deal or a Sham?

    “If you see an amazing deal on a set, it could be because it’s been cranked out in a limited run just for Black Friday,” said Benjamin Glaser, features editor at DealNews.com. “They can artificially inflate the price and exaggerate the discount because there’s technically no price history for that product, since it’s brand new.”

    These limited edition models are called “derivative” products. Sometimes the manufacturer simply gives an existing product a new model number. In other cases, they make changes to the current model in order to hit a lower price point. For example, a TV could have one less HDMI input or use lower quality parts.

    “It’s a strategy devised by manufactures in conjunction with retailers that makes it harder for shoppers to do direct price comparisons because you’re not going to see that exact same model anywhere else,” explained Jim Willcox, senior electronics editor at Consumer Reports. “It also helps retailers as they’ve stepped-up their price-matching guarantees. Almost all of these price-match offers are limited to the exact same model. If you can’t compare that exact same model, they don’t have to match the price.”

    source
  • FlembleFabber@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    In my experience almost al websites use this tactic lol

    source
• Gaxsun@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Piss, I’m glad I live in a country where that’s illegal.

  source

  • Dojan@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    It’s illegal here in Sweden, for example the lowest price within the last 30 days also need to be listed alongside the discount offer. The effect this has is that 31 days before Black Friday, the retailers bump up the price.

    source
  • Thorry@feddit.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    YSK that this is indeed illegal in many places such as the EU for example.

    However those tricky manufacturers have a few tricks to get around this. One of the things they do is to create special “discount” SKUs. Despite their name, these SKUs are often not discounted at all and kept artificially high. Their specs usually aren’t great, so the value for money is poor most of the time. However when something like a holiday sale comes around, these SKUs get discounted massively. That way the shops can still claim the discount is huge and would technically be legal, even though there are plenty of other very similar SKUs in the same series that were available for less.

    This isn’t a new thing, so called “retail” SKUs have also been around for a long time. Ever since webshops started out-competing retail stores manufacturers have been creating retail SKUs. These are often very similar or the same as another SKU in the series, but given a unique number and sometimes name. These SKUs are then only sold by distributors to retail outlets. Then when a shopper is in the store and looks up the price of the SKU on the internet, they don’t see a dozen webshops with a lower price, but instead only other retail chains with a very similar price. This is to stop people from going to stores, get advice and look at all the models, only to then buy the selected model online. Of course smarter people can easily figure out which SKU is the corresponding non retail SKU. But if you are smart enough to do that you can probably figure out what model to buy without going to a store.

    Still it’s good for the law to exist and it does help a lot. The whole SKU shenanigans are only for some things, such as TVs, notebooks, appliances such as washing machines and vacuum cleaners, and some other stuff people usually go to stores to buy. For a lot of smaller stuff, such as PC components for example, this usually doesn’t happen.

    source

    • tiramichu@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      This custom SKU trick is also used by retailers to advertise “We’ll price match any other store!” when technically the only store who sells that exact SKU is them!

      (Of course some retailers are genuine when they offer to price match, it’s not always a scam)

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • SaraTonin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      When I was in school a teacher told us that washing powder manufacturers would have a way of getting around “advertising needs to be true and accurate” laws. What they’d do is gradually reduce the strength of their product over time (normally by just cutting it with something cheap). Then they’d revert it back to its original strength so that they could announce “Now TWICE as strong!”

      source
• kameecoding@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I had a screenshot of when I looked at a smartwatch I was considering, and wow, it was 50% off, ofc there is a shop aggregator site in my country that has price history and it has been selling at that 50% price for months before

  source

  • yermaw@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I wish I’d kept screenshots, because I tried to buy something for £80 a few weeks before black friday. Thought id hold on and maybe itd come in the sales. Suddenly it was £180 £100

    source

    • GargleBlaster@feddit.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Camelcamelcamel tracks Amazon prices. I think there’s even a script that displays the price history right on the store page.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• DrFistington@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Fuck black Friday. I would rather just hibernate after Thanksgiving until the new year, and skip Christmas entirely

  source

  • over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Santa doesn’t live in the USA though, didn’t the Turnip put tariffs on him too?.. 🤔

    source

    • Kintarian@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Santa won’t be allowed into the US because he’s obviously a liberal giving presents to poor children, obviously a terrorist.

      source
  • Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I celebrate the winter solstice as the night of family. You and your immediate circle of close family gather to appreciate each other’s company. You’re only allowed to give useful clothing, hand made goods, or items that will meaningfully improve the life of a loved one. Last year I gave my spouse a coat hook with a dinosaur on it for her backpack.

    source
  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Hmmmmm. Hey guys! It’ll be really easy to steal things from this guys house on black Friday. All you gotta do is be quiet. He’s going to eat himself into a coma on Thanksgiving!!!

    source
• felixwhynot@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  If you’re going to shop, use something like CamelCamelCamel.com to determine a good price.

  Alternatively, boycott Black Friday and shop on another day!

  source

  • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I feel like they bought the domain name while drunk, and then had to come up with a website to put on it afterwards.

    source
  • Tja@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    In Europe, idealo is great. For IT stuff and electronics, Geizhals.

    source
• Credibly_Human@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Real consuuuuumers know that if you want an actual deal on something you plan to buy, you should wait for a rolling sale.

  This has the added bonus of forcing you to think about how much you actually want to buy said thing, and also comes around pretty frequently so you don’t have to wait for any yearly events.

  All time low prices are just not worth it in terms of time investment monitoring sales unless the thing is your hobby or you are really hard on cash and the purchase is a necessary one and a stretch for you, but then those purchase usually are not ones you can wait for anyways.

  source

  • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    rolling sale

    What’s that?

    source

    • Credibly_Human@lemmy.world ⁨48⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      A term for a regular sales price that comes back at normal not specifically event related intervals.

      For instance many clothing stores will just have a “sale” every 4 weeks fore the same prices as the sale 4 weeks ago.

      Another example is consumer electronics. Look at any price tracker and they’ll usually follow a very loose pattern

      Relevant random example of some harddrive Image

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Umm, we got one of these dumped off at our city park for like over a month or so. Yes used and starting to rust on top a bit, but still fully usable with just a bit of grill cleanup.

  I think it’s been basically honorary community usage since it was dropped off, I’m surprised nobody has stolen or scrapped it yet.

  source

  • crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    i got one that somebody was giving away for free. It was in rough shape, but still usable. I used it a couple of times before closing it for the winter. When springtime came around and I was ready to grill again, I was surprised to find a nest full of eggs. We watched the babies hatch, grow up, and leave the nest. Now we just keep it as a bird nursery.

    source
• psx_crab@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I swear i can check the price history in TaoBao last time i use it, now i can’t seems to find any. It’s one of the function i find very progressive because seller can’t do shit like that and get away with it.

  Another shit move is set the price higher and discount it for 30/40% every single day, it makes their price hard to track.

  source
• NatakuNox@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Image

  source